Help - new macbook pro supplied with partitioned disk

I'm wondering if anyone can advise, I'm new to this so please forgive my ignorance.

What I want to know is if your HD is partitioned into 2 drives, is it possible to make one of the partitions bigger without having to backup and reload all of the programs that you have installed on your drives (I don't have copies of all the software that was supplied on my computer to reload the programs). The partition I want to make larger is the startup drive that has Mac OS 10.6.5. The other 'partition' drive is pretty useless to me and I didn't want it in the first place.

I got my macbook pro 15" from an education supplier who installed software and the OS (Snow Leopard). They put the partitions on my drive. Although I would have preferred to set things up myself, I got the macbook at a 2/3 of the price for accepting their support (it's through my college access fund). Apparently the partition is there so that if they have to do support they can do it more easily. I don't understand why they need a whole half of my hard drive for that though.

The problem is they have partitioned the drive which they have split exactly in half. I only seem to be able to load programs onto the drive that is the Mac startup drive. If I try and put programs onto the 'Data disc' partition, they won't install there as there is no Mac os on that drive.

I want to install Adobe Creative Suite but that takes 25gb alone of space and it will have to go on the Mac partition.

Also what exactly is the point of having a parititioned drive? When I try and open files in programs that are located on the 'Data disc' partition - half the time the program doesn't even recognise the 'data disc' so I can't access the files through the program. It seems pointless having that partition and it means I'm losing out on 150gb of space.

The only problem is I am not allowed to just delete the data partition myself, they want a second partition for their technical support backup stuff and I think if I deleted it that would affect my warranty.

I'm just wondering if it would be possible to resize the partitions so that they get to keep their part but my partition is a lot larger. And can I do this without having to reinstall all my applications?

And if this were possible is this the kind of thing I could do myself or would I have to return the computer to them to do it?

(PS. I tried ringing them but they are closed until the end of the month).

MacRumors attracts a broad audience
of both consumers and professionals interested in
the latest technologies and products. We also boast an active community focused on
purchasing decisions and technical aspects of the iPhone, iPod, iPad, and Mac platforms.